The Auditor-General’s Office has released an Assurance Review providing an insight into how Government Agencies have addressed past audits, finding they took on average of 15 months to complete a recommendation.
In his report, Responses to Performance Audit Recommendations 2015–16 to 2017–18, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves (pictured) says that nothing came to his attention to indicate that overall agencies were not effectively implementing recommendations from past performance audits.
“Most agencies report having governance arrangements that allow their senior management and audit committees to monitor progress in implementing our audit recommendations,” Mr Greaves said.
“The effectiveness of these governance arrangements has enabled agencies to report that most of our recommendations are complete,” he said.
“However, they do not always complete recommendations as quickly as intended or needed. All agencies can work to improve this.”
Mr Greaves said a minority of agencies had not provided necessary progress reports on audit recommendations to their audit committees or given their audit committees a role in assessing when recommendations were satisfactorily addressed.
He said this prevented the committees from fulfilling their legislated oversight function.
“Of the 465 recommendations we made that are the subject of this report, 455 (or 98 per cent) were agreed to,” he said.
Mr Greaves said that in December 2019 the Review found the status of agreed recommendations was 60 per cent complete; 13 per cent almost complete; 25 per cent in progress or had just begun; and two per cent yet to begin.
The Auditor-General’s 266-page Review can be accessed at this PS News link.
